OCP Ink

[nche11]

I am not saying you were talking about print head clogging. Maybe the other guy did but not me. I am saying your post #5 needs to be a little clearer. I am only saying by seeing the word clogging the idea of print head clogging immediately pops out. If you are giving your opinion about the ink it is necessary to be clear about what you are saying. I would not say clogging. I would say print head clogging or purge unit clogging.

Now that you are saying there was no print head clogging on those 6 or 7 printers it is getting more interesting now. The picture you posted has shown enough of a fact that the long strip of text printing nozzles were covered under the dried up ink. There was no possibility those nozzles could still print normally without a severe clogging symptom. The nozzles were covered under a thick layer of ink. I wonder why you did not see any clogging symptom.

I believe you are an expert in vacuum filling of cartridges. But your picture showed massive amount of ink on the surface. The ink had to come from the nozzles. Based on my experience there was a very bad leaking. I am one who refill the traditional way. I had many sealing problems in the past before I found a sure way to seal the top fill hole. Whenever I had a sealing problem I had leak and each time I would see similar picture on the print head surface. When I saw your picture there was no doubt to me there was a leak from the cartridge.

Believe it or not, a leak caused by the sealing problem can be extremely slow and it will bother you with the clogging symptom long before it empties itself. Unless you leave the printer alone for a week or so you would not see the cartridge emptying itself. I had many sealing problems with my BCI-6 carts and I have seen that too often to make mistakes about it. In fact I have a habit of checking the print head surface whenever I felt a clogging symptom (streaky print or banding). If there is ink on the surface I know I have a leak. A quick swap of the cartridge always fixed it instantly. The ink shows a color so you will know which one leaks. If there is no ink on the surface than I know have a real clogging.

If you did not top fill your cartridges which is pron to the leaking issue then I can't explain why your print head showed a thick layer of ink leaked out of the nozzles. I can not understand that why you did not see any clogging symptom either. I used enough of the same ink over a much longer time (and the other poster used many 8 oz bottles of it) and we did not have the problem.

 

[nche11]

To make it short to be right on the money, George, could you explain why you did not see any clogging symptom but your picture showed a thick layer of ink covering the whole strip of nozzles?

 

[ghwellsjr]

The print head itself was not completely clogged and the picture shows about 20% of the pigment black nozzles with no dried ink on them. The initial clogging was down below the purge unit and worked its way up. First the absorber pads clogged up which then clogged the output of the purge unit tubing which then clogged the purge unit tubing itself and finally the purge pad on top where the print head parks. Once that happened, every time the printer attempted to do a cleaning cycle or a purge cycle or a prime cycle, even though there was no suction on the bottom of the print head, the nozzles would fire, depositing ink on the purge pad (up on top) but the ink could not be sucked away, so it just sat there until wiped away by the wiper blades. In the picture you referenced, you can see the thick deposit which accumulated between the two wiper blades. Doesn't that make perfect sense?

 

[The Hat]

nche11 What do you mean? Please explain.

ghwellsjr comments were on the purge unit not on clogged print heads.

I also didnt mention anything about clogged print heads eider..

 

[nche11]

Thank you Hat. I already explained to George that I wasn't saying he meant to say print head clogging.

If someone asks opinions about quality of an ink and you say there is a clogging issue I think I will think you are talking about print head clogging. It could be just me of course. It would be nice to be more specific to say purge unit clog if that's what you are talking about.

 

[nche11]

George, Your shortened version of the description of the problem is a lot clearer now. I can understand how you interpreted the symptom to clogging of the purge unit. I am not going to dispute with you the way you think what it was. I will just offer you a different thought. It's meant for brain storming only.

I have seen your article of your vacuum refill method. I wonder if your cartridges were damaged by the vacuum refill method. The method created a significant amount of vacuum in the cartridge. The moment you released the vacuum from the vacuum chamber the atmosphere pressure forced the ink through the tiny vent hidden under the label into the cartridge including the reservoir tank. That was a few seconds of time the cartridge was under the huge atmosphere pressure. The cartridge is made of two pieces. One piece at the top and the reset at the bottom. The two pieces are glued together at the factory. There is a possibility that the joint between the two was cracked. If the crack was at the joint at the reservoir tank it will cause the cartridge to leak exactly like a cartridge with a sealing problem. The leak will be extremely slow. You were unlikely to detect it before installing the cartridge to use it.

Also when you squeeze the cartridge to force ink out of the sponge through the vent it could be a problem there too. Why didn't you force the ink out through the big outlet? If you force the ink out trough the vent you would need to squeeze the cartridge hard and squeeze many times. That could cause the joint to break too and cause the cartridge to leak. This is of course another possibility only.

I am only trying to explain the problem in a different way. Your picture is telling me there should not be that much of ink on the surface of the print head without bothering you. You should have seen clogging symptoms long before the purge unit was clogged up.

I also think that ink should have overflown out of the printer if the waste ink pad could not absorb it. The purge pump should have been able to move the ink all the way down to the pad if the ink was there by cleaning cycles. If the ink got there because of leaking then it would make sense for the ink to remain in the purge unit and dried up in there to clog the purge unit.

Please consider this post as a brain storming message. Did you ever consider the fact that I have no problems whatsoever with the ink and there are others with same experience too? I am specifically clear about this in using Hobbicolors PMT-BK ink. I used Inktec ink before too and I did not have issues either.

 

[ghwellsjr]

Nche, a vacuum chamber can only create less than 15 psi pressure differential to atmospheric. A syringe can easily create a positive pressure over a hundred psi. Besides, the vacuum is released slowly so that the pressure differential across any part of the cartridge is much less than 15 psi. Was this the article on vacuum refilling that you saw? You can see how slowly the ink flows through the air vent path, through the sponge and into the reservoir. I don't release the vacuum all at once. I release it slowly. But even if I did, the pressure has to build up in the vacuum chamber before it can create the pressure differential between the inside and the outside of the cartridge.

After I refill a cartridge, I wash and dry it and then I blow on the air vent to reduce the ink in the upper sponge material. But this won't clean all the ink out of the air vent path because there are some small wells that would still contain some ink. I have to turn the cartridge upside-down to get the wells empty. (I explained all this in the article.)

I have taken apart some of these cartridges and they are very durable. I don't think there is any chance that I could squeeze them hard enough to cause a crack which would result in a leak.

Ink will not flow down into the purge pump tubing unless the purge pump is running. It's a peristaltic pump which is a piece of plastic tubing that gets pinched by the pump mechanism. The point of pinching is moved along the length of the tubing to create the pumping action. That is why if you put Windex on the purge pad, it just sits there until the next cleaning cycle.

On the printers that I was maintaining, I used Windex and I cleaned the bottom of the print heads so there was never any build up of ink on the bottom of the print head. My friend that had the printer that I took the pictures of complained about several cartridges not working before I realized what the problem was and it wasn't until much later that I had a chance to see his printer and by that time it had the build up of ink on the bottom of the print head.

I was not the first one to have this clogging problem and it wasn't my idea to connect it to Inktec ink. It was first reported by Pharmacist here that a German website was reporting the problem. That is where I began to wonder if it was the Inktec ink but I didn't make the hard connection until some time later. You can read about my struggle here and you will see that I still wasn't blaming the Inktec ink. Pharmacist repeated the warning again here.

 

[nche11]

It's just a possibility. It's human nature that you won't easily believe there is a problem in your vacuum refill method. Please pause and put your focus on something else for a moment.

I am seeing that there was so much ink on the surface of the print head and you did not see symptoms of clogging. That is something to look into. The ink won't be there if there isn't a leak from the cartridge.

The purge pump could suck ink out of the print head. I understand your logic here. You think because the purge unit was clogged so the ink had no where to go but to accumulate in there. If the purge unit was indeed clogged first it would not have been able to suck the ink out of the print head. There would have been no ink there.

My interpretation of the pictures is ink leaked out overnight or over a few days. The print was streaky or had banding. Initially a deep cleaning probably improved it. But it would return the other day so more cleaning cycles were done. Eventually the cleaning cycles dumped huge amount of waste ink in the purge unit. The owner gave up and put it aside until you got the printer to look into it. The pictures showed what you saw.

You have been focused on the dried ink centering at the purge unit. I am suggesting you to switch your focus for a moment to think of why there was so much ink there. If the problem really was the waste ink pad unable to absorb Inktec ink I would think there would have been ink overflown out of the pinter. There would have been ink spill.

You did discover the difference of Inktec ink and others. But the fact that Inktec has sold much of the ink over many years all over the world it is very unlikely they would not have been told of the problem. They continued to formulate the ink the same way for their PGI-5 ink. That does not make a lot of sense to me. Inktec sold their ink mainly through their distribution channels. They do not sell ink with a retail store. Their distributors can't be stupid to continue selling their ink if the ink had the problem. It's highly unlikely users of the ink would not have discovered problems with the ink without complaining to the sellers of the Inktect ink. Was there anyone else complaining purge unit clog on this forum?

If you read Pharmacist's post again he said print head clogging and purge unit clogging. You said you had no clogging issue. He also said Hobbicolors, Image Specialists, OCP and Inktec (dye only) and KMP pigment ink are the beste refill inks. This had in fact invalidated your conclusion of your test. You concluded Hobbicolors is as bad as Inktec. There is much to think about about your test as others had doubt about it too.

It's good to explore the unknown. But one must be careful in making conclusions.

 

[RMM]

The purge pump could suck ink out of the print head. I understand your logic here. You think because the purge unit was clogged so the ink had no where to go but to accumulate in there. If the purge unit was indeed clogged first it would not have been able to suck the ink out of the print head. There would have been no ink there.

The purge pump doesn't just suck the ink out, the nozzles also fire (like when the printer is printing) to expel the ink out. In that way, even if your purge unit is not working, ink will still come out of the printhead during a purge/cleaning cycle.

While Ghwells's tests may not actually prove that specific inks will in fact clog inside of an actual printer (the actual conditions may be different his test), I do believe that his experience with multiple real world printers is valid.

I am grateful for his time and effort in contributing so much to this forum.

 

[nche11]

The purge pump doesn't just suck the ink out, the nozzles also fire (like when the printer is printing) to expel the ink out. In that way, even if your purge unit is not working, ink will still come out of the printhead during a purge/cleaning cycle.

This is actually not true for Canon printers. If the purge cycle is designed this way there is a great chance it will damage the print head. The purpose of a purge cycle (Canon calls it a cleaning cycle) is when there is a doubt that the nozzles may be clogged or there is air in them the purge unit pumps (sucks) ink from beneath the print head out of the print head to prime the print head. If the nozzles are also fired when the nozzles are in fact clogged it will definitely damage it. What you said may be true for Epson printers. You can keep firing the nozzles when they are clogged without damaging anything. The Piezo crystal will not break off without firing billions of times.

You have a point that I agree. Which is the difference of the ink's property discovered by Ghwellsjr. It is something to be concerned. If I have never used the ink that he rated poor I would have immediately believed it and shut off the possibility in using the ink. This is just the way people react. This is why I think Ghwellsjr needs to be careful in making any conclusions. I happened to have used the inks he rated poor. I have used enough of them and long enough to point out that his conclusion is inconclusive.

I also have a big concern the way ghwellsjr wrote in his response to the question the original poster asked. I do think he needs to be very specific when using the word clogging. I think he needs to spell out exactly the words of purge unit clogging. He did provide a link to his test and he was very specific about the purge unit clog. I do not have a problem with that.

One of the rules of this forum is disallowing production promotion posts. I think it is appropriate to say the rule should be expended to disallow product demotion too. I know, people will disagree with me. But without such expansion of the rule it can be easily done by people to demote certain brands or products to achieve a same goal of promoting another brand or products. This is not good for anyone of us consumers. This is why I ask that one should be careful in conducting any test and making any conclusion on this forum. If we don't have this understanding and if every ink vendor sends people to this forum to conduct negative campaign against all their competitors it won't be long before anybody can trust anything posted on this forum.

I know. Internet forums are where people are allowed of their right of free speech. If there are rules to disallow certain type of speeches they are for the benefit of the people participating in the forums.

Happy refilling and printing.